Erin Blakemore, “Ambition,” from The Heroine’s Bookshelf
I have a confession: I haven’t been reading much. I’m experiencing a last-semester-of-grad-school slump. And depression. And I didn’t want to pick Little Women back up because I always get so bored of that suppression. But I want Jo to be my heroine, like Jane Eyre. I can do this. After reading Erin Blakemore’s words on our heroine, I want to do this.
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Externally, Little Women seeks to instill all of the boring values of boxed-in femininity on its readers. Pickled limes and vanity: bad! Self-abnegation and backbreaking labor: good! The need for self-denial is impressed on Jo and her sisters at every turn; instead of setting aside your dishpans and going for a hike in the woods, you should stay at home where you are needed. Cheerful Beth, who goes about her housework with a song on her lips, is a saint; Jo, with her complaints and her awkwardness and her inability to cook, is a dangerous hoyden.
But look again. Once you drop the desire to see suppression in every page, it’s easy to find Jo’s rebellion. In a move that’s outraged readers since 1869, she refuses to marry Laurie, a young man with the advantages of being dashing, rich, hotheaded, and adoring. But Jo isn’t ready to lay down her arms and take up her needle (or put on a wedding ring) just yet. By refusing to indulge her best friend, she is a better friend to herself, a slf in need of air and freedom, the liberty she’d never possess in the expensive trappings of a Mrs. Lawrence…in Jo, Louisa unwittingly (or, even better, purposely) unmasks her little outlets, the very things she relied on to drag herself through a life of crushing expectation and ugly, unremitting labor.
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